It is general in an image forming apparatus that the density of an image formed on a sheet varies in connection with variation of an environment such as temperature, humidity or the like, or deterioration of consumable goods such as toner or the like. In order to overcome such a trouble, an image forming apparatus that can perform stabilization control has recently spread. Here, the stabilization control is defined as a control operation to form an image having a stable density by correcting an image forming condition.
There has been disclosed a printer in which an image for measurement is formed on a non-image area unused for image formation on an image carrier and a density characteristic thereof can be measured and corrected on the basis of the information of the thus-formed image for measurement (see JP-A-2000-318276).
Furthermore, there has been disclosed an image forming apparatus in which when the stabilization control being executed is interrupted, only unfinished stabilization control is executed without executing any finished stabilization control again when the control is resumed (see JP-A-2007-316195).